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Month: January 2008

As I mentioned earlier–it’s 1966, okay? We’re less than five years into the Marvel Saga here, and already we’ve got Count Nefaria crooning “yesteryears”? (and what’s he doing on this cover anyway–auditioning for the role of “monocled carnival barker” in a Fellini film?) This may seem demented, but it’s actually par for the course in American pop culture during the period in question (I’m thinking of stuff like The Bagdads’ “Bring Back Those Doo-Wops” or The Penguins’ “Memories of El Monte”–both of which pine for the glory days of 1958, in the early sixties!) Comics editors, in the fifties, expected 100% turnovers in their readerships every 5 years, and Hollywood studios like Warner Bros. made a habit of remaking movies like Tiger Shark and The Strawberry Blonde at about the same clip–the assumption being that people would welcome these narratives like old friends. That’s just how this stuff works–Marvel was no more dependent upon popular nostalgia than their contemporaries (across the various media) were.

However, Marveldom had begun to distinguish itself by the meticulousness of its
accounting for the interest generated by its collective memory banks. And, again, this was Roy Thomas’ doing, more than anyone’s… Now, I’m aware that my investment in “dynamic stasis” makes me love the weirdness of Marvel’s “sliding time line” in a way that most of you can’t possibly condone–so I won’t ask you to join me in cheering Roy on as he crams FIVE lame-assed villains into six pages of Central Park, singing songs of themselves, to the tune of scholarly footnotes–but, come on! this pretty cool!

(Actually, for some reason, the Porcupine DIDN’T get a footnote, but he did get an appreciative welcome from Hank McCoy:

)

My point, with the whole dynamic stasis thing, is that what appears, on the face of it, to be a forgetting machine is actually a memory machine deluxe. Yes, it may seem like madness for a text to ask us to believe that all of the times that the FF have faced Doc Doom, or the Thing has been cured of his affliction, or Professor X has stood up and sat back down again can/must fit on a five-year chart–but the upshot of this practice is that it takes the emphasis OFF of the characters (and the canons of “realistic psychological development”) and places it squarely upon the readers, who are then given carte blanche to ponder the events of the current issue in juxtaposition with EVERYTHING that has ever happened in the unclassifiable Marvel past, rather than being forced to accept the current author’s diachronic power play–it’s historiography without history! It’s wonderful! (this, by the way, is why I HATE reboots, which are nothing but diachronic power plays–Marvel was a lot better off under the old dispensation…)

Okay–I think that’s all I have to say about these issues–although people who actually read them will note that Roy again makes much of the fact that these X-Men are completely anonymous, as far as the public is concerned, and are therefore particularly vulnerable to identity theft, supervillain style. But check back here soon, ’cause the next issue (which contains Roy’s first wonderful addition to the Marvel roster) was one of my favourites, back in the day, and I don’t expect that’ll change this time around!

How did I forget this letter? It’s like it was written just to spur me on! (and to demonstrate that readerly “production” goes hand-in-hand with the sense of belatedness/distance from the characters that the Roy Thomas era ushers in). Anyway, here’s the letter, written by Dick Glass of UC Santa Barbara, published in X-Men #20:

Congratulations on X-MEN #17! I like your new corner cover logo, which, added to the sanguine, monochromatic cover, made quite an impression. The story held quite a lot of promise, since ol’ Lodestone Lips is supposed to be on another planet with the Stranger. As much as I never could stand Magneto’s gang, I do like Magneto and I hope he plays a single this time around. I enjoyed the beautiful four word description of his character– “I? I am power!” I can’t wait to see how Iceman saves the day. The fellas at the dorm think I’m ape over Marvel comics, but that’s because some day I hope to be part of the comics field, and I figure studying the best of ’em is a good way to get the feel of the medium. We write to the men responsible for giving the characters life and vitality, not the characters who are merely the concrete expression of their creative genius; to men who know what the “adult” comic reader wants, who listen and act on readers’ suggestions, who do not hide behind the front of “editor”; men who are recognized personalities! An integral part of the Marvel magic is the fact that the mags are done as conversation between you hip, fun-loving, romantically-optimistic, roll-with-the-punches bunch of fellas, and us readers who like to see one ray of hope shining through the mushroom cloud which hangs over our future — (yes, Virginia, there will be a future) — and who like to have someone honest and frank to talk to. Both the bullpen and the reader know that mag is entertainment, but that doesn’t mean it should insult one’s intelligence. The bullpen knows that the fans read as relief from studying for that vital exam, or to recapture one small bit of their childhood happiness which the world snuffs out these days. And the readers know that the bullpen is out to make money (a noble ambition–keeping America strong through the practice of its foundation–capitalism), but both have fun doing what they do, and a pleasant symbiotic relationship is formed. Pardon the philosophy gang, but I have my week moments. Didn’t say too much about the X-Men–what kinds letter of comment is this? Just keep your great stuff coming for those of us who appreciate greatness.

[Could there possibly be a more perfect demonstration of the “dialectics of excitement” in action? (Although I’m a lot more interested than Dick in the possibility that this particular capitalist process could generate a critique strong enough to stand in for the proletarian class-consciousness that we know we’ll never see…)]

Dearly BelatedX-Men #20 & #21(for a more straightforward account of what’s going on in these issues–check out Paul O’Brien’s excellent X-Axis synopses, here and here)

So all of the major Marvel titles were in place. The Origins had been told. Even Galactus, THE single greatest marker of unrepeatable presence, in a world of serialized existential conflict, had come and gone (the May 1966 publication of X-Men #20 coincided with FF #51).The diastoles and systoles of the Merry Marvel Myth were known quantities–and readers could be forgiven for switching into pulse-checking mode…

Enter Roy Thomas! (Actually, he had entered quite a bit earlier–through his letters to the FF, from 1962 on–and also through an opportutunity to write Sgt Fury–which reminds me–I’m not going to be discussing Roy’s non-superhero work in this series–limits must be drawn somewhere!) As a trained historian, literary dilettante, AND fan-without-peer of SEVERAL American pop-cultural genres, Thomas was uniquely positioned to guide Marvel through its “years of consolidation”.

“Stern Stan” had been playing the mock-scholar and schoolmaster in the footnotes for a couple of years at that point, and now he loosed the real thing upon the Marvelites and their jointly-held metatext. Correction. The metatext, in fact, sprang, fully-formed, from Roy’s head (that’s Plok’s contention here–and he’s absolutely right).

Roy stole the fire of narrative creation from the TCJ-Gods Kirby and Ditko, and gave it to the fans, who spread the blaze to the far corners of the earth, and the lettercols. (And–incidentally–“demythicized” the whole process–the whole idea of the “Marvel Canon”, contra Richard Reynolds, becomes ridiculous, once Roy reconverts Jack, Steve and Stan’s atom age sociodicy back into text–a field of pure cultural production–“apres Roy, le deluge”! )

And the process is evident from the Boy’s first issue. Break new ground? Hell no! Roy’s revolution is invisible at the surface level. It’s all a question of burrowing tunnels through the ruins of the Heroic Age. First order(s) of business–dramatize Prof X’s paralyzing accident, try to do SOMETHING with Lucifer (who had been given an inexplicably big build-up in X-Men #9), and drive home some facts about the internal dynamics of the strangest super-teen team of all.

Let’s begin with the last item:
These X-Men are the closest things to fascist stormtroopers you’ll find in supercomics before Alan Moore hits the scene.

How are they fascists? Let me count the ways.
1. They wear identical, masked outfits–the sinister aspect of which is emphasized by issue #20, which begins with Unus and the Blob (both old-time foes of the team) electing to rob banks in x-garb… the idea, apparently, comes to them as a mental suggestion from Lucifer, who needs them in order to draw the X-Men’s attention to his activities, for reasons that never do become clear… (a side-note: Jason Powell and Geoff Klock’s discussion of Chris Claremont’s–and, now, Joss Whedon’s–penchant for stringing issues of cat’s paw-foes together on a submerged thread of behind-the-scenes malevolence really has to be back-dated to Roy’s tenure on the X-Men… that’s practically ALL Roy did on the book! First we get Lucifer manipulating Blob and Unus–then, as you’ll see in future posts, we have Count Nefaria’s little marionette show in issues #22 and #23, and then we have the “Factor Three” storyline, which took about a year and a half to resolve, and was almost entirely composed of waves of duped mutants and Spider-people bedeviling the X-Men at the behest of the “Mutant Master”) Anyway, the ploy works like a charm, and definitely should have helped to drive home the point that the X-Men are, at the very least, a public-relations disaster for mutantdom.

2. Basic psychology–they’re a group of alienated, emotionally-unstable (especially “team-leader” Scott) teens, led by a domineering father-figure with mind-control powers.

3. Which leads to situations like this:
Try to follow along here kids–

Lucifer has unleashed “Dominus” upon an unsuspecting world!

(Dominus, by the way, gets my vote for most outrageously phallic doomsday device in the history of impotent earth-threatening:

)

The X-Men zero in on the danger! (in issue #21–after being trickily-alerted to the threat by Lucifer, who just can’t seem to bear the thought of conquering the earth without parading his triumph in front of Charlie Xavier, the man whom he had lovingly crippled some time in the dim X-past–no wonder he gets fired by the high command after this issue–he’s nowhere near single-minded enough in his pursuits) The paralyzed Prof X discerns that assaulting Dominus itself would be pointless, and could trigger the destruction of the earth even before Lucifer is ready to make it happen–and beams a very scattered version of this thought into the minds of his pupils, some of whom–notably the Angel–aren’t so sure that it isn’t a Luciferian trick. And the reader isn’t given any clues here either. To tell you the truth, I was leaning toward the Angel’s interpretation of things, until THIS happens:

Wow! There’s a lesson in “team spirit” kids! Blast your friend in the back with your deadly eye-beams (and this won’t be the last time that Scott treats Warren this way! Oh yes–and don’t forget that they’re also rivals for “Jean’s love” during this time! I think this goes a little beyond the intramural “bickering” that Stan Lee had made a Marvel trademark…) It turns out that this was exactly the “right” (i.e. textually-approved) move on Cyclops’ part… That crazy Angel, going off half-cocked, ignoring the voices in his head–he’s lucky they didn’t execute him on the spot! It’s a chastening moment–and nicely establishes Prof X’s arbitrary cult leadership once and for all. (this is a pattern that will persist for the entire duration of Roy’s run on the book–every decision X makes seems designed to keep the teens not only on their toes, but unable to tell up from down in the “mutant struggle”–makes you wonder how much Morrison’s Chief–in the Doom Patrol– was relying on Thomas’ Xavier, doesn’t it?)

This group-dynamic was always implicit in the Stan-and-Jack issues–but Roy (with that sucker-blast) gives it a solidity it had never had before–and, hence, bequeaths opportunities for “character development” to himself and his descendants… As Plok would say, Roy is MAKING the status quo here… In related news, he elects to give us an extended flashback into Prof X’s past, which follows up on issue #9’s declaration that Lucifer broke Charlie’s legs (turns out Chuck got off on liberating subjugated Asian peoples in the fifties)–again, this serves the purpose of shining a light into a dark corner of the emergent Marvel Universe, making a “usable past” for every writer to come… although, in this case, the effort was somewhat less than successful. I quite agree with Paul O’Brien’s assessment of Lucifer’s lack of potential as a character–all of which makes Prof X’s statement that he formed the X-Men in order to train a group which could oppose the alien conqueror seem faintly ludicrous. (best interpretation of that, again, is that X is playing more mind-games here–every issue, it seems, the team is confronting THE threat which called them into being… let’s just say their status is becoming mildly overdetermined at this point)

hmmm…well, I guess that’s all I’ve got to say about X-Men #20 and #21… but gangway for issues #22 and #23 very soon!

I’ve been horribly ill (just a flu/sinus/fever thing–but still!) for about a week, which explains the lack of Roy Thomas posting that you’ve seen here. I think I should finally be able to get that series under way by later tonight or tomorrow–but, in the meantime, here are a couple of responses to items from the letterc…uh…comment-threads!

1. Plok: Point very well taken, re: Dave Sim and his seemingly-unrepentant/unexamined brand of “Canadian Self-Loathing”… I’m positive that you’re right about the man’s private views (and I know a lot of people like this too, sadly)–I suppose what I’m trying to argue (actually, this is what I’m always trying to argue, in just about ANY context) is that the text of Cerebus is far wiser than its creator… Sim probably just thought it would be funny to make a super-Canuck roach that was allergic to cold and snow (i.e. I’m sure he never really meant it to be read as a critique of the very idea of a stable canadian identity/perspective), but it worked so well with the rest of what I wanted to say about the Roach as a figure of media-manipulation that I had to go with it…

2. Mr. Golding: I’m not sure how well this clears things up, re: “Councils of Perfection”, but I guess what I was going for, with the pun, was a way of invoking the impossibility of satisfying the ethical demands placed by the narrative upon the superhero protagonist (in the case of that essay, Animal Man) AND the way those ethical demands reach out beyond the text to impress themselves (in equally impossible terms) upon the “readers/creators-by-committee”, which is something like a narrative COUNCIL, no?

3. Also–thanks for the many welcomes back, both on Motime and through email/Facebook (and I know I owe some responses to some of you!)

I’ve been a little preoccupied with movies and the Twin Peaks boxed set of late, so Roy Thomas will have to wait just a little bit longer… In the meantime, I thought I might repost my contribution to this interesting discussion of Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest masterpiece over at Geoff Klock’s blog (I didn’t love the film nearly as much as Punch-Drunk Love–but believe me, that’s no criticism at all!)

I think [Klock-commenter] Erin’s dead on target here–and her evaluation of Plainview as a character may go some way toward explaining the genesis of the misleading trailers/expectations that Geoff speaks of… Actually, Plainview gives us most of what we need in that little speech he delivers (on the beach is it?), shortly before he kills Henry…

Daniel has “an envy” in him–he makes a competition with everyone he meets… in fact, he IS competition… the only people he can get along with are those he can conceive of as extensions of himself (his son; his “brother”–who, despite his seeming fitness as a companion, CANNOT be a friend; even the townspeople, as long as they’re workin’ on that oil problem)… this is why familial tropes are SO important to Daniel (i.e. always the main triggers of his rage–“don’t tell me how to raise my family”–“I’ll cut your throat”–not the most effective business-tone there; you’re not my brother so naturally I HAVE to kill you; you’re not working for me anymore, so you CANNOT be my son; Eli: you represent a puerile religion that I hate, and you’re making claims upon me based on ties of kinship? I have to kill YOU to!)

Of course–I DO have to disagree with Erin when she claims that Daniel is “real” (i.e. in the sense that he’s unpredictable/not an allegorical embodiment of anything), because, as I say, I interpret him as insanely consistent–the personification of competition from the beginning to the end (his tenderness–while certainly “real”–being the natural result of an intense self-love breaking beyond the limits of Daniel’s physical person)

But one thing that Geoff (as a Bloomean) should love is that one could argue that Daniel’s reading of the world as a competition is such a strong piece of misprision that he forces audiences, trailer-editors, and even PTA himself (if some of the interviews are to be believed) to imagine that there’s some kind of an apocalyptic duel going on in this movie, when, in sober hindsight, it becomes clear that NO ONE in There Will Be Blood constitutes any real threat to its protagonist.

They’re undoubtedly crazy, in the least aesthetically-pleasing way possible. And yet, there’s a place in my heart for this kind of studied ugliness. No advocate of the simple beauty and full-speed ahead dynamism of the Silver Age, my interest in these books is rooted primarily in the narrative friction generated by the efforts of fans and fan/creators to catch that early Kirby lightning in a bottle and keep it spinning between all of the parties concerned. Obviously, I will never be confused with Arlen Schumer (where is he these days? I liked that book–even if I didn’t agree with it!).

Anyway, Roy’s words (and ideas) were more instrumental than anyone’s in bringing forth the “dynamic stasis” that I’m always talking about (or, that I USED to talk about, a few years ago). In the panels above, he fits 99 words into what the characters admit is a “split-second” (later, in the eighties, he would chronicle about 2 months of World War 2 in 66 issues of All-Star Squadron). Roy is the king of compression, if nothing else. But, of course, he’s a lot of other things too… He’s the ultimate Derridean storyteller, actually, almost preternaturally conscious, from the beginning of his career, of the extent to which we, as subjects, as characters, as writers, are part of a story which has “always already” begun. Plok, in very different terms, has done an admirable job of articulating a parallel take on Roy here.

And if you’re interested in seeing where all of this fits into my own dissertation, I can only point you toward the “cliffhanger” at the end of this essay.

I thought some old-time motimers might be interested in reading the MLA-panel-road-show version of a paper that I’m still working on–entitled, tentatively,

Barbarism Begins at Home: Canadian Politics and the Politics of “Canadianness” in Cerebus #1-50

I want to begin with a couple of selections from the parergon, or frame (with all of the Derridean reversals and ambiguities the term invokes) of the text in question—which is Cerebus, an alternative black-and-white comic book published by Aardvark-Vanaheim, out of Kitchener, Ontario, beginning in 1977.

The first item is a “Note From the Publisher”, written by Denise Loubert, who introduced every issue of the series, in a space reserved for her comments on the inside of the front cover, until she and the book’s author (Dave Sim) were divorced, in 1983.

This “Note” comes from Cerebus #25 (published Feb 1981):

Between issue 24 and 25, I went to my first “big-time” hockey game. Because I had always watched the Toronto team on television. I had never experienced what a hockey crowd is like. It helped me to understand what “Canadianism” is, and why something as unrelated as Cerebus is a truly Canadian product.

Dave is a very “Canadian-canadian”. He loves watching hockey, he loves the change of the seasons. He especially loves the snow. And he’s not that fond of a really warm summer. His viewpoints on politics are from the angle of a Canadian, informed but wary. It seems to me that this book, althoughnot plastered with obvious symbols like maple leaves and such is very Canadian in feel.

Cerebus is always cautious and often quite cynical. But these are the things that help him survive. He is, after all, only 3 feet tall, and surrounded by 6 foot beings who could destroy him without being too upset by it. So Cerebus must be clever, not powerful, in order to come out even, let alone ahead. Which is also very Canadian. A Canadian is someone who is running, just to stay where he is and feels accomplishment when he does so. He is a survivor. If he comes out ahead, it’s never for very long. This issue is is a good example of the survivor who knows all the tricks, never misses a beat or loses an opportunity. This, of course, is all hypothesis on my part. I’m not saying Dave is saying all this in Cerebus. I’m not saying he isn’t either.

My second excerpt comes from a letter written by frequent correspondent TM Maple (more about him later), published in Cerebus #38:

…Finally (at last!) I note that six of the seven letters printed in the issue were from American readers. Oh no! Another Canadian cultural institution is on the road to Americanization. It happened to the National Hockey League (which is still, of course, Canada’s primary cultural institution) and it can happen to Cerebus. So I say: Re-Canadianize Cerebus! Let’s get some government initiative here (DREE, LIP, OFY, FIRA, LADEDA, or whatever) to fight yet another foreign takeover. We kept the World Football League out of the country, so we can darn well help a furry animal.

Cerebus began its run as a parody of Conan the Barbarian, a pulp phenomenon of the 1930s, which had had returned to pop cultural prominence in 1970, with the successful launch of a Marvel Comics series devoted to the character. Cerebus became an immediate cult favourite by virtue of its interesting fusion of elements from the “funny animal” and “sword and sorcery” genres. In these early issues, the series relied heavily upon the comedy inherent in its depiction of a “cute” 3-foot monochrome anthropomorphized aardvark wading bloodily into a grimly “realistic”/detailed world of magic and strife cribbed from the visual lexicon of Marvel artist Barry Windsor-Smith. During the first year or two, the artist adhered very closely to the initial formula for Cerebus—introducing the aardvark to a number of foils conceived along similar parodic lines (notably Red Sophia, a spacy seventies post-hippie in the murderous body of a Conan’s counterpart, Red Sonja and Elrod the Albino, a replica of Michael Moorcock’s fantasy swordsman Elric, who speaks like Foghorn Leghorn).

In issues #14-16 (the “Palnu trilogy”), the series shifted into another register, away from opportunistic parody, toward a more continuity-conscious mode of pastiche, held together by an absurd/anarchic political philosophy culled from the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup (1933). The key figure in this shift is Lord Julius—the ruler of Palnu, the richest city-state in Cerebus’ world of Estarcion—who tempts the aardwark away from the life of a northern barbarian by elevating him to the post of Kitchen Staff Supervisor (an extremely important cabinet position in the incomprehensible bureaucracy of Palnu). Lord Julius is, for all intents and purposes, Groucho Marx—with the important distinction that, where the latter often played mock-authority figures, too bemused or self-critical to make of use of the power vested in them by their scripts, Lord Julius is a mocking authority figure who maintains an almost mystical hold upon the reins of power in his city (and, indeed, in the entire narrative) by skillfully exploiting the incompetence and vanity of his peers. The upshot of this variation upon a scheme is that, where the Marx Brothers films portray power as arbitrarily ludicrous, Cerebus reveals it to be ludicrously arbitrary—and deadly serious, not to mention murderous, in the bargain.

The restaging of Cerebus upon a politically charged landscape, forged through a Canadian artist’s engagement with the American pop cultural unconscious, had immediate consequences. In Cerebus #18, on the “Aardvark Comment” page, a letter announced the formation of an (American) friends of Cerebus club at the University of Michigan—complete with a photo of the founding members in their matching aardvark shirts. The following month’s issue featured a mock-political poster, designed by the same club, which declared Cerebus’ Candidacy for Dictator in 1980. The image was captioned by a blurb which promoted this drastic step as the only possible solution to the “dweedle-dee and dweedle-dum blues” generated by the American two-party system.

And it was during this very same period that Dave Sim began using Aardvark Comment as a platform from which to rail against the equally corrupt “Big Two” which dominated the comic book production and distribution networks at that time—Marvel and DC. The first salvo was fired in Cerebus #18, when Sim reproduced a letter from Marvel’s editior-in-chief (Jim Shooter) which reminded all employees of the company that any creative work they produced at Marvel belonged to Marvel. This was, in fact, merely a restatement and clarification of corporate policies which had been in force within the industry since its inception in the 1930s.

Cerebus was by no means the only recognizable independently-produced comic book in circulation at that time, but it was the only series that had any purchase upon the American subcultural imagination which originated in Canada. Then, as now, many people on the other side of the border shared Deni Loubert’s idea of the Canadian as “outsider” (and therefore privileged critic of American life)—and Sim did often portray himself in this light (i.e. as the voice of independent art and political commentary within the comics subculture—as seen, perhaps most prominently, in issues of The Comics Journal, published during the 1980s). All of this paratextual blurring of political, industrial, and cultural discourses would re-enter the “text proper” of Cerebus during the “High Society” storyline, which ran from #26-50.

The storyline, in bullet-form:

1.Cerebus wanders into Iest—a major city state north of Lord Julius’ Palnu—intent upon liberating himself from the (to his barbarian mind) overcivilizing influences of the metropolis.

2.Once there, however, he discovers that, as Kitchen Staff Supervisor (and, therefore, “ranking diplomatic representative” of Palnu in Iest), he is an outrageously sought-after figure (by local politicians who wish to curry favour with Lord Julius)

3.Cerebus is persuaded, by Astoria, a canny, crypto-feminist politician, to take advantage of the situation and run for office as the Prime Minister of Iest

5.…only to discover that Iest is bankrupt and terminally in debt to Palnu. Moreover, the country cannot even pay its own soldiers, and teeters on the brink of a military coup.

6.Hoping to pillage his way to prosperity, Cerebus orchestrates the invasion of neighboring Lower Felda, justifying the move publicly by paying rhetorical lip service to the ideal of liberating the enslaved citizens of LF (and, perhaps, of all Estarcion)

7.In the process, Cerebus earns the respect and allegiance of the anarcho-romanticmovement of Iest, and turns this to good account by deputizing these young radicals as peacekeeping auxiliaries

8.The army succeeds in its mission, and discovers, in its turn, that Lower Felda, too, is broke and in debt to Palnu.

9.Lord Julius summons Cerebus to a secret meeting in the city of Beduin, where he demands full payment of all debts owed to Palnu by Iest and LF (all the while intimating—in pig latin—that Cerebus ought to have sent his armies against the other attendee at the conference—Duke Leonardi)

10.Cerebus refuse, setting up several dramatic rounds of renaissance-style battle and barter by mercenary armies, all of which leads inexorably to the defeat (and escape) of Cerebus; and the imprisonment or execution of the Anarcho-Romantics

These events can be interpreted in any number of ways, but my reading proceeds, via two different routes, to the same conclusion—i.e. Sim dramatizes his own dawning realization that, regardless of the pose he adopts as an artist and citizen, he is still inextricably enmeshed in the economic and political system controlled by the metropolis to the south.

Sim’s deployment of tropes derived from the comics subculture is particularly inspired. Cerebus secures his party’s nomination for the PM-ship at a convention (called “Petunicon”) which is indistinguishable from the major promotional rallies that his author was touring so relentlessly at that time. The success of his efforts (and its dubious consequences) is best (and most shrilly) articulated by the TM Maple letter quoted at the beginning of this presentation.

Maple himself was on a parallel trajectory, within the fannish sector of the subculture. A Canadian christened Jim Burke, he first made a name for himself as a correspondent in Marvel superhero comics of the mid-1970s. Hoping to distinguish himself—and perhaps in deference to Marvel’s heritage of (sixties) quasi-radical irreverence—Burke signed his letters “The Mad Maple”. However, by this period, Marvel had become the dominant publisher in the industry, and their new editorial policies necessitated the transformation of “The Mad Maple” into the more businesslike “TM Maple”. Perhaps the most-published letter-writer of his era, Burke came to enjoy a great deal of popularity within the subculture, and when it came time to write to Aardvark Comment (whose policies would by no means have condemned Burke’s original choice of nom de plume) he did so under his corporate identity. By Cerebus #38 then, both Sim and Maple had become trade-marked “voices of Canada” within the subculture, despite the fact that their dialogue was clearly underwritten (or, at least, made relevant) by the American-led commercial system that each claimed to abhor.

One final way that I would propose looking at this aspect of Cerebus #1-50 would be to interpret the narrative through the lens of the Roach—a character first introduced (in #11) as a schizophrenic merchant who spends his nights shoring up the gaps in his colonized cosmology by beating the living daylights out of suspected and imagined criminals on the streets of Beduin. At that time, the Roach wore a costume that parodied DC’s Batman. The character’s subsequent “development” encompasses a series of identity-permutations which present Sim’s exaggerated portrait of the debased North American subject in Adornian thrall to a dizzying series of mass-cultural sub-rational political appeals. In issues #21-22, he appears as Captain Cockroach, a super-patriot along the lines of Marvel’s Captain America (and, of course, he is the dupe/henchman of a fascist-in-American –Founding-Father-Clothing/Wig). In issues #29 through 40, he plays the fractured role of the Moonroach, who has three separate identities—one, a dutiful twit descended from the “original” merchant persona, the second a teenaged “fanboy” driven by Nietzschean ressentiment, and the third a vigilante who wears a costume modeled upon Marvel’s Moon Knight and goes around dropping massive crescent moon sculptures upon Cerebus’ oligarchic rivals for control of Iest, yowling “Unorthodox Economic Revenge!”

The character’s final destination (within this sequence of stories) is his most unusual one. Immediately after Cerebus emerges as the “people’s choice”, the erstwhile Roach redubs himself “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon” and adopts the garb of a Canadian Mountie. While this can be read (and almost certainly was intended to be read) as a kind of overcoming of American mass-cultural influence through the consolidation of an integrated Canadian identity for the Roach, Sim undercuts this by paralleling the story of Cerebus’ political downfall with Sergeant Preston’s gradual discovery, as a Canadian-style winter descends upon the narrative, that he has a fatal weakness to snow (which he calls “deadly frostonite”). Given the importance of snow to Canadian identity, this amounts to a form of autoimmunity within that vexed subject position. And so, just as Sim, Cerebus, TM Maple, and Sergeant Preston approach their respective crescendos of independence and “Canadianness”, each is reabsorbed into the American masscultural melting pot so clearly alluded to by “frostonite”, which immediately calls to mind Kryptonite and Superman—the ultimate figure in pop-myth of the cultural insider-outsider.